Carlos Castillo Armas

Carlos Castillo Armas (4 November 1914-26 July 1957) was President of Guatemala from 7 July 1954 to 26 July 1957, succeeding Elfegio Monzon and preceding Luis Gonzalez Lopez. He seized power from Jacobo Arbenz Guzman's socialist government in a CIA-backed coup in 1954, and he reigned as a right-wing dictator until his assassination in 1957.

Biography
Carlos Castillo Armas was born in Santa Lucia Cotzumalguapa, Guatemala in 1914, the illegitimate son of a planter. He joined Francisco Javier Arana's forces during the 1944 uprising against President Juan Federico Ponce Vaides, and he was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel and became director of the military academy. Arana and Castillo opposed the new government of Juan Jose Arevalo, and, after Arana's failed 1949 coup, Castillo went into exile in Honduras. In 1950, he launched a failed assault on Guatemala City before escaping back to Honduras. In 1952, however, the President of the United States Harry S. Truman - pressured by the Cold War-era threat of communism and by the United Fruit Company - plotted a coup in Guatemala, to be carried out by Castillo. The coup came to fruition in 1954, when Castillo led 480 CIA-trained soldiers into Guatemala. President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman was persuaded to resign, and the military junta which succeeded him negotiated peace with Castillo, who became President on 7 July 1954.

Presidency
In October 1954, Castillo formally ran for President as the National Liberation Movement candidate. As the only candidate of the only party, he won 99% of the vote. He rolled back Arbenz's popular agricultural reforms, returning confiscated lands from small farmers to large landowners. He also cracked down on unions and peasant organizations, arresting and killing thousands; 10% of the population was added to a list of suspected communists. His government was soon plagued with corruption and soaring debt, and it became dependent on US aid. On 26 July 1957, he was shot dead by a presidential guard as he walked through the Presidential Palace with his wife, and his guard - who had leftist sympathies - committed suicide to avoid capture. Not long after his death, the Guatemalan Civil War broke out as leftists rose up against his successors' continued reversals of the Guatemalan Revolution's reforms.